Farek leaned against the wharf post, watching the churning waves below. It was raining a little, just a drizzle. The foamy water reflected the coiled clouds overhead. It wasn’t an excellent day to begin a voyage, but Farek wasn’t going to waste another day. A bird’s dropping landed in the ocean with a plop nearby, and Farek looked up at the spiralling gulls. Many were small grey ones, but a few enormous white ones, shadow gulls, reigned over the others.
It was time for Farek to get back home, where he could look down on the common labourers, like those enormous birds.
Matek and Sievus were chatting nearby. The former was sharpening a little dagger he had purchased in the market with a whet stone he had borrowed from Diaren. It was early; the sun was just starting to rise and, with it, the sailors.
Diaren came striding back along the dock with two packs of supplies. “Ready?” he asked.
Farek stood up straight and scratched his shoulder to scatter dust and salt from the corner of the loose beige shirt he wore. His boots scuffed along the dock as he led the way towards a ship at the end.
The Cooper’s Favour was a little schooner, bound only for Starath. It wasn’t the fastest route, but would likely save time in travelling delays and it would also save coin. The brown sails rippled in the wet easterly wind and the ropes groaned against the moorings. A few sailors were moving cargo aboard with ropes, dragging it up a rubber loading guard so as not to scrape the varnishing on the ship’s hull. The sailors waved as their passengers approached and their mercantile master barked orders for their supplies to be carried for them.
Before Farek climbed aboard, he glanced back up the slope toward the city of New Mallam, up the long slope from the harbour town. He half-expected to see the steward bringing him a reply to the letter he had sent, or the Baron himself. He hoped they heeded his letter—if Tarro sought revenge, he would likely achieve it upon them.
“Nothing,” he muttered. A few sailors were climbing the steps, but that was all. The grey clouds and the bleak horizon were all that hailed to Farek, casting their gloomy, damp tidings down upon him and quickening his pace up the gangplank. Starath awaited, then Noress-That-Was, and then the City of Sorrows he missed so dearly.